When Harold Molaison was considering buying his home in the Bonnabel neighborhood close to Interstate 10, he was wary of potential noise problems. That was 2006, and Molaison made sure he spent some time inside the home before making a final decision on the purchase.

View full sizeTed Jackson, The Times-PicayuneHarold Molaison, left and his neighbor Mario Sanchez talk about the gap in the Interstate 10 sound barriers in front of their homes on Tuesday.

"I didn't have any problem with the interstate, because I could walk up to the interstate and hear the noise, and by the time I walked to my house, the noise dissipated," he said.

After a widening project that included sound walls was completed in early 2009, the noise situation was dramatically different, said Molaison, a Metairie lawyer.

"Now, it's like the noise is double to what I heard before. It's just not a quiet neighborhood, and we expected it to be a quiet neighborhood," he said.

From Causeway Boulevard to the parish line, homeowners on both sides of I-10 have complained about noise problems that seemed to grow exponentially after sound walls -- designed to muffle highway noise -- were constructed, said Bob Evans, president of the Bonnabel Civic Association.

The worst areas seem to coincide with gaps in the sound walls near the beginning and end of the Oaklawn and Bonnabel overpasses.

Officials from the state Department of Transportation and Development say they've heard the complaints and are now bringing out a contractor to verify the noise problem, DOTD District Administrator Mike Stack said.

That confirmation is necessary to get the federal highway officials to pay for a solution, Stack said.

"We're going to do what we can," he said. "Are we ever going to be able to satisfy the neighborhood and address all of their concerns with sound? I don't know that yet."

Evans said he's pleased "to hear they are working on it. We'll be pleased if there is any substantial solution."

Any improvement in the noise situation would be huge, said Margaret Frank, who lives about a block from the highway on the north side of I-10.

Seventeen years ago, Frank found what she thought was the perfect home in a perfect neighborhood: a one-story cottage with four bedrooms, 2,400 square feet and a garage apartment.

"The noise is all-consuming," said Frank, assistant director of catering at the Hilton Riverside Hotel in New Orleans. "It was never there before. When I sit on my front porch, it sounds like planes are taking off."

Stack said there's no indication the design of the widening project or the sound wall was deficient. Gaps in the sound walls are necessary to provide sight lines for drivers, particularly near highway entrances and exits.

Stack said his first thought was to simply put up additional sound walls in the gaps. But he said he's been advised that won't work because of sight-line issues and the fact that the foundations in those areas can't handle the wind loads.

Mario Sanchez is an engineer who lives with his family just three houses from the highway on the south side of I-10, near a chain-link fence.

He recognizes a proposed solution must be feasible, but he also quotes what he said is a well-known saying in the engineering field: "If you have enough money, we can design anything you want."

It's unclear how long it might take to confirm the noise problem and come up with a solution, Stack said.

"But if we did cause the problem we'll address it," he said. "There are just a lot of steps to go through first."